The Obama administration’s decision last week to delay for one year enforcement of penalties against employers that fail to offer affordable health insurance gives employers the chance to cancel their benefits for the year and pocket a boatload of cash.

It’s like a quarterback who takes a snap when a defender was offsides. He can throw the ball deep hoping for a touchdown while being secure that, if he’s intercepted, he’ll get to run the play over again.

“You can essentially get a freebie for 2014,” Hamilton told me, predicting that “some employers are going to stop offering coverage in 2014 just because there’s no financial penalty for doing so.”

The penalties were part of President Obama’s 2010 health reform law, officially known as the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, but better known as Obamacare.

For employers that failed to offer any health insurance, those penalties would have totaled $2,000 per full-time employee, but not counting the first 30 employees. Also, Obamacare introduced a new definition of full time: workers averaging 30 hours per week.

For employers that offered health insurance that was too expensive for employees—costing more than 9.5 percent of their household incomes—the employers would have paid fines of $3,000 for each of their workers who instead bought health insurance in the government-run exchanges that Obamacare will create.

Since these penalties are far lower than the $16,000 average cost of health insurance policies, many pundits—particularly those who dislike Obamacare—have predicted a wave of employers dropping coverage.

But as I pointed out two years ago, such predictions ignored the other elements of employee compensation and the dynamics of competitive employment markets.

Before last week’s announcement, Hamilton expected less than 5 percent of employers to drop coverage in 2014. And he still expects the majority of employers not to drop coverage.

But the delay puts a new option on the table: Drop coverage for one year, see whether employees like buying through the exchanges and, if not, start up coverage again in 2015.

He acknowledged that even though there is no financial penalty in 2014, there could be an employee-relations penalty to be paid for dropping coverage. And that’s one that won’t go away easily.

“Dropping health insurance is going to go over like a lead balloon with your employees,” Hamilton said. It’s for this reason, and the fact that the Obamacare penalties will kick in in 2015, that many pundits do not expect the delay on the penalties to have much impact on employers’ actions next year.

But Hamilton said employers will at least give the idea a serious look, especially employers with lots of low-wage workers to whom they currently offer health insurance. Think of companies like Starbucks or McDonald’s.

It will come down to each employer’s cost-benefit calculation—how much money it would save, whether its employees would fare better or worse by getting government subsidies to buy health insurance in the exchanges.

“This could be a windfall for these employers,” Hamilton said. And, “the employees could actually fare better—better coverage at lower cost.”

It just depends on whether employers think the one-time profit boost is worth the risk of angering their employees.

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ReporterHealthcare, life sciences, education

Health Care & Life Sciences WeeklyIndustry e-newsletter writer

Wall's career as a journalist was set in fifth grade, when he took on an afternoon paper route for The Indianapolis News. He admits to being a terrible paperboy because instead of delivering the newspaper right away, he would sit and read it for hours. He may have lost some customers, but he never lost the bug for news. A lifelong resident of central Indiana, Wall grew up in Sheridan—the one spot in Hamilton County untouched by suburbia. After graduating from DePauw University in Greencastle, he joined The Indianapolis Star as a business reporting intern and refused to leave until he had a full-time job. Wall stayed there five years before joining IBJ in February 2007. Wall and his wife now live in Indianapolis with their two sons. When not at the office, the Walls spend time with their extended family and worship at Christ Church Reformed Presbyterian in Brownsburg.

all’s career as a journalist was set in fifth grade, when he took on an afternoon paper route for The Indianapolis News. He admits to being a terrible paperboy because instead of delivering the newspaper right away, he would sit and read it for hours. He may have lost some customers, but he never lost the bug for news. A lifelong resident of central Indiana, Wall grew up in Sheridan—the one spot in Hamilton County untouched by suburbia. After graduating from DePauw University in Greencastle, he joined The Indianapolis Star as a business reporting intern and refused to leave until he had a full-time job. Wall stayed there five years before joining IBJ in February 2007. Wall and his wife now live in Indianapolis with their two sons. When not at the office, the Walls spend time with their extended family and worship at Christ Church Reformed Presbyterian in Brownsburg

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On Tuesday, April 24 IBJ & Indiana University will host Education-to-Employment (E2E) Convergence, a panel discussion focused on how Indiana can build a talent strategy around a more highly educated workforce. E2E will identify examples of successful partnerships to better integrate college graduates into our workforce from around the state. Register today.